Aaron Glantz

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 17 2007 (IPS) – On Sep. 19, Kay McMullen had the last conversation she ever would with her son, Gerald Cassidy, or G.J., as he was known to his family and friends.

Sgt. Gerald G.J. Cassidy Credit: Cassidy Family

A sergeant in the Indiana National Guard, G.J. had been injured in Iraq by a roadside bomb in June 2006. He returned to the U.S. five months ago, and was receiving inpatient medical care through the Wounded Warrior Transition Programme at Fort Knox, Kentucky.

As they talked on the phone, the 32-year-old father of two com…

Zofeen Ebrahim

SEOUL, Nov 24 2007 (IPS) – The one message that came across at the just concluded general assembly of the World Toilet Association (WTA) was that conventional flush toilets are not only environment unfriendly but are also a serious public health hazard.

Experts Mamit (left) and Gijzen (right) advocate an end to flush toilets. Credit: Kyung Eun

And while the United Nations estimates that 2.6 billion people are living without proper sanitation and without access to potable wat…

Kester Kenn Klomegah

MOSCOW, Jan 4 2008 (IPS) – A group of civil society activists has called for immediate boycott of Uzbek cotton produced by forced child labour.
Unlike other developing countries, they say, child labour in the cotton sector of Uzbekistan is not the result of poverty but of a coercion policy adopted by the central government.

Under the Soviet Union, forced labour was accompanied by some care for the health of children, the quality of their nutrition, and development of the rural social infrastructure, Nadejda Atayeva, president of the Paris-based group Human Rights in Central Asia told IPS on email. Now forced labour is compensated neither by decent payment, nor through public funds.

Every year, starting September, schools across the count…

Praful Bidwai

NEW DELHI, Feb 8 2008 (IPS) – The arrest of Indian kidney transplant racketeer Amit Kumar alias Santosh Raut has lifted the lid off a huge well-ramified illicit international organ trading ring with operations running into billions of dollars across several countries.
Kumar, who was tracked down in a resort in neighbouring Nepal on Thursday, has been absconding from the law since Jan. 24, when the police raided his clinic in a Delhi suburb and arrested his associates. He is thought to have been responsible for some 600 illegal kidney transplants.

The global kidney transplant racket is one of the most obnoxious manifestations of North-South inequality and of the repugnant practice of stealing organs from the poorest of the poor in the Third World, usually…

Sabina Zaccaro

ROME, Mar 7 2008 (IPS) – Women have launched a renewed campaign in Italy against a move to overturn the right to abortion.
Women scientists, intellectuals and professionals are asking women to oppose a new clerical assault on women. They are fighting attempts by centre-right politicians and Catholic doctors associations to limit the current abortion law.

The law, upheld in a 1978 referendum, allows abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and until the 24th week if the mother s life is at risk or if the foetus is seriously malformed.

Its opponents say the law should be restricted in light of medical advances allowing survival of some foetuses born before 24 weeks.

Debate and demonstrations over the law followed a call by Giuliano Fer…

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Apr 18 2008 (IPS) – North Korea s desperate need to feed its citizens has prompted a United Nations agency to warn of a humanitarian crisis looming up in the months ahead.
The price of basic food items in Pyongyang, the country s capital, offers a stark picture of the reality average workers face when buying provisions. A kg of rice currently sells at 2,000 North Korean won (14 US dollars), up from 700-900 won a year ago, while maize costs 600 won (4.20 dollars) per kg, up from 350 won for the same amount in April 2007, states the World Food Programme (WFP).

Other staples, such as pork, potatoes and eggs have also risen manifold, making these items a luxury for most people, adds the WFP. A kg of pork now sells at 5,500 won (35 dollars), a…

Rosalia Omungo

NAIROBI, Jun 2 2008 (IPS) – The road leading to the informal settlement of Korogocho is narrow and winding. Here, in Nairobi s third largest slum, up to 150,000 people are crammed into an area of just over one square kilometre, their shanties made of cardboard, wood or metal.

A hanging toilet , in Korogocho, where water supplies are inadequate for the demands of residents. Credit: APHRC

Arguably of greater concern, thoug…

Tran Dinh Thanh Lam – Newsmekong

CAN THO, Vietnam, Jun 30 2008 (IPS) – The bustling city of Can Tho is the capital of southern Vietnam s fertile Mekong Delta and one of the country s two main rice baskets. Good food in abundance makes it an ideal place to raise ducks and chickens, but this also means it is also one of the most high-risk areas in the country for bird flu.
While new outbreaks of the disease threaten the entire country, as harvest season gets underway officials are urging farmers in the Delta to be particularly vigilant.

This is the time of the year when the whole of the Mekong Delta should keep our wits about bird flu, Nguyen Trong, a senior official in Can Tho s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development and a member of the local Bird Flu Control…

Annie Brown

WASHINGTON, Jul 30 2008 (IPS) – HIV/AIDS activists Wednesday hailed President George W. Bush s reauthorisation of the President s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to 48 billion dollars for fiscal years 2009 to 2013 as a major step in the global fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
Paul Davis, director of Health GAP (Global Access Project), welcomed the Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde United States Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorisation Act of 2008 as a huge step forward for people with AIDS worldwide.

Health GAP and its allies were a leading voice in the yearlong negotiations that pushed the United States to pass legislation that they say goes beyond an increase in funding Bush s original proposal author…

Milagros Salazar

PUERTO OCOPA, Peru, Sep 15 2008 (IPS) – Ashaninka women give birth at home, in accordance with tradition, declares José Ponce, the head of the health committee in Puerto Ocopa, a village of 253 Ashaninka indigenous families deep in the central Peruvian jungle.

Native women prefer to give birth at home. Credit: Milagros Salazar/IPS.

But the Peruvian government is trying to convince indigenous women to give birth in medical facilities, in order to cut maternal and infant mortality rates.

Since 2004, i…